With Him
by Cassandra Mulder
Summary: All the fighting, the sleepless nights, the impossible odds will be worth it no matter what.


**Title:** With Him  
**Author:** Cassandra  
**Rating:** K+  
**Classification:** Arrow; Olicity; romance; angst  
**Spoilers:** Unthinkable (2x23), a sprinkling of the series  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, never gonna be mine, just playing in the sandbox.  
**Written:** May 22, 2014  
**A/N:** It's taken me awhile to process the season finale, but when Felicity starts spouting monologues in your head right before you need to sleep, that's when you know you've processed enough. Reviews are love, and every one is appreciated. :)

* * *

I guess if I had led the life I was "supposed" to, the one my mother had determined I'd never escape from, I'd have met a guy eventually. Hopefully a nice one who liked me, who I liked back, and treated me well. But let's face it, the odds of "nice" guys are low on the Vegas Strip.

But, no. I struck out on my own path, determined to get away as far and as fast as I could from where I'd grown up.

That's how I ended up with _him_. Not, you know, _with _with him. Working for him. Being partners with him.

With him in probably every possible way but _with him_.

And I don't know, maybe that worked for awhile. I would be an absolute liar if I said I didn't instantly develop a crush on him that day he came into my office and smiled at me, trying to sell me some horrendously phony story about his coffee shop being in a bad neighborhood.

I had seen Oliver on the news a million times since he had come back to Starling City, and this tall, charming guy with the scruff on his face, who couldn't lie his way out of a wet paper bag was so entirely different from the perception you got of him watching the news or working for his family's company.

He made me nervous, just not in the way I had thought he would make me nervous if I ever met him. Not that I had really thought about it till that day. In my experience, rich sons of CEOs don't come waltzing through the IT girl's door very often. Meaning, at all.

But there he was, and at that point I was not used to how good looking he was in real life, or the quiet power, carefully controlled, that seemed to radiate off him in waves. Needless to say, I was a mess. Well, more of a mess than usual, anyway. Which is saying something, if you really think about it.

I thought I was helping him because I worked for him, in a way, and because I wanted to find Walter. But in the end, God only knows why I've stayed. It's a full time job just convincing him of who I know he really is. He seems to forget that a lot.

We've done a lot of good. We've gotten into a lot of trouble. We've saved each other's lives, and you would think that would be the big thing.

You would think.

But sometimes the way he looks at me... Well, that can confuse a girl, and maybe make her think things that aren't happening. I wish he understood that when he looks at me the way he does, or touches me, effortlessly protects me, that he's only making it worse. If I can't be _with_ him, I still can't be without him. And regardless of how sad it is or how little people outside of us would believe or understand it, this is the most intimate relationship I've ever had with a man.

I would venture a guess that it's the most intimate relationship he's ever had with a woman, but I think Oliver and I would have different definitions of the term. The kind he thinks is necessary, I've watched break his heart over and over again. The kind we have is, well, that's a different matter all together.

So very recently, when we all thought the night would end with nothing short of our collective deaths in Starling City, and he dragged me to his childhood home and told me he loved me?

If he was trying to finish me off by cardiac arrest before I could get blown up, it almost worked. It felt real in the moment. Absolute. Unquestionable. There was that look, just like every other day, only multiplied by a thousand. And, I, who can always tell when Oliver is lying - the one who knows his expressions, intonations, footfalls, the very sound of his breathing - was momentarily taken in by what had to be a lie.

He pressed a syringe into my hand, careful of the exposed needle because he knows how I hate them, and asked me to understand his plan. I did. And I snapped my brain back to the mission and told him yes. It was my job to get to Slade, to end this without Oliver having to kill again. I had told him there had to be another way, and he had figured it out. He would have let me off the hook if I had refused, I know. But I was his partner, and this life had been my choice all along. I couldn't let my fear or my feelings get in the way when half a million people's lives, including ours, were on the line.

So I accepted the mission, and he left me there to wait. I gave myself a minute to gulp for air, trying to absorb what had just happened. I couldn't think about how he had just given me what I wanted and taken it away within the space of a minute, because there were more important things to worry about then. And trust me, the fear when Slade's soldiers showed up overtook everything.

The risks were real, and Slade could've killed me at any moment. I knew it and Oliver knew it, so the fact we all came out of it without a blade through the chest is a miracle in itself.

Regardless, when Dig found out what Oliver had done, he had been furious at first. I thought there was going to be a casualty after all, and it would be Oliver at the hands of John. I managed to talk him out of it, but in order to calm him down at all, I had to reveal the whys and wherefores of the plan. "Oliver shoved me at Slade as bait" wasn't really going to cover it in his world.

Dig squeezed my arm and told me he was so glad I was okay, but he wouldn't even look at Oliver for two days. Every time Oliver would uncomfortably look Dig's way and squirm, I would bite my lip to keep from smiling. Dig is one of the most important people in my life, the closest thing I will ever have to a big brother, and the fact that he watches out for me in his own ways and knows what Oliver is doing to me but lets us handle it makes me feel not so alone. Sometimes just having someone who acknowledges your burden lightens it. And that's Diggle all the way.

I know that we drive him crazy, and he knows Oliver drives me crazy. The only one who seems generally unaffected is Oliver, who, for all the brave and insane things I've seen him do, still displays an appalling lack of self-awareness the majority of the time.

When we were leaving Lian Yu after Oliver spoke with Slade, I did go fishing for information about his whole scene at the mansion. He really gave me nothing to work with, which is just so Oliver I can hardly find it in me to be upset. But the little voice in the back of my head that has been taunting me ever since the day I met him wants to believe he really did mean what he said, in some way. Because like I said, I can see right through him, and sometimes I still see his face in that moment in my dreams, and I can't do anything but believe him.

I know that he cares about me, because his actions prove it, and Oliver is so much better with actions than words. Words scare him almost more than anything, and I know that even two years later he's still working things out. I can't keep expecting things to change overnight when he's been through what he has. I don't, not really. I don't know where we'll end up. I hope that I can be there for him for as long as he needs me. But on the personal side, I won't wait forever. Right now I can because I think we might be on the right track.

Whatever doubts I had about how I feel about him were taken away in the dead of night at the Queen mansion. If I hadn't been in such shock, if he hadn't given me a mission a second later, how I felt might have come spilling out, too. I know what it looks like and sounds like when he says "I love you" now, and it's that image, permanently burned into my brain, that keeps me wondering. I want to believe there was truth there on some level, and that when he's ready, I will still be here. All the fighting, the sleepless nights, the impossible odds will be worth it no matter what. I'll still love him. Through anything, I will stand with him.

Fin


End file.
